owing either to my inadvertence, or my mistaking such point for a matter of little moment. And if I have not fully proved the truth of any one proposition among those laid down, the failure is owing to my weakness, not to the want of arguments sufficient to demonstrate that proposition. I may have pitched upon a weaker argument, when a stronger might have been chosen, had it occurred; or I may have put the argument I did choose in a weaker light than it might have been put; but these defects are to be charged on me, not on my method, which, if rightly managed, might give an easy, short, and decisive solution to all the leading controversies among us on religious subjects. Since longer methods have been tried with very ill success, let this short one have a trial too, which will prevent abundance of trouble, if it does no more, and, at worst, will leave the point in question where it found it, without adding, as hath been unhappily the case, a number of new-invented difficulties, generated by the vague reasonings, or rather imaginations, of pretenders to knowledge, who in a fog of their own subtleties and refinements, for the most part, lose sight of even the question originally started, and almost always of the truth. If however I have done nothing else in this attempt, I have, at least, drawn a line across the wood of controversies, which if followed by a sincere inquirer, will give regularity, precision, and it is hoped, stability, to his progress in religious knowledge.

It will be easily observed, that this my line leads directly into the church, whereof I am a member. True, and did it lead into any other, I should instantly be a member of that other. Few men, now alive, have with more candour and diligence, through a long course of reading, disputing, meditating, sought for religious truth, than I have done; at the end whereof, I now solemnly call God to witness, that the Christian religion appears to my understanding the only religion of God, and the national church, wherein I most imperfectly endeavour to serve him, the single church on earth, wherein he may be served most agreeably to his word, and with the greatest safety to the soul of his rational servant.

END OF VOL. III.

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